1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical switching element, an optical switching device, and an image displaying apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical switching elements for light ON/OFF and optical switching element arrays with such optical switching elements arranged in an array have been widely used in the field of optical communications and image displaying apparatuses. Projectors are examples of such image displaying apparatuses.
As examples of elements for optical switching, those using a liquid crystal and those using a micromirror have been widely known. Also, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-287047 suggests “an interferometric optical switching device that controls light by using a reflection mirror and a semitransparent mirror”. This device performs switching by changing a distance between the reflection mirror and the semitransparent mirror and using an optical interference effect.
Meanwhile, R. Magnusson and S. S. Wang, “Transmission band pass guided-mode resonance filters”, Appl. Opt. Vol. 34, No. 35, 8106 (1995) (hereinafter referred to as non-patent document) reports “a narrow-bandwidth reflection wavelength filter”.
An object of the present invention is to achieve an unprecedented novel optical switching element using the principle of an anomaly phenomenon by a diffraction grating and an optical wavelength reported in the non-patent document mentioned above and, by using such an optical switching element, to achieve a novel optical switching device, an image displaying apparatus, a color image displaying apparatus, and the like.